STRIKE 2!!!!

July 7th, 2010

Today was our appeal court date and after almost 2 hours in court, it’s another DENIAL!!! We were 4 families today that all had our court date one at a time and all 4 were denied. Fil and I were already told by several people that it would be a denial but when you hear it from their mouths a second time around it still hurts. There was a lot of debate going back and forth between the Judge, Prosecutor, the Ministry of Education, Guardianship Counsellor, Director of the Orphanage, Vera and Medet. Medet stood up and read them our appeal letter and then concluded with, “Let us look out for the Best interest of this child, Mr. Casacalenda and Mrs. Colasurdo have lived in Taraz 4 months and have bonded with Korkem everyday and really love this child and this child is really attached to them.” The judge responded, “ We have nothing against Casacalenda and Colasurdo family and there is absolutely nothing wrong with their file but the procedure for Int’l Adoption was not followed”. This is what is so upsetting, we are being penalized for someone else’s mistake. THEY HAVE BEEN DOING THINGS THE SAME WAY FOR YEARS BUT WE JUST HAPPEN TO BE THE LUCKY ONES TO GET PICKED ON TO START GETTING THEM TO FOLLOW THE PROCEDURES!!!! It just drives us crazy on how long they can drag this on and simply get away with it. Where do they get the courage to penalize the children and the adoptive parents who are the innocent ones in all this mess!!!!!

Tears were just running down my face in the courtroom and all I could think of is how much wasted time these people are taking away from these children to be in a loving home. International Adoption in Taraz usually took about 3 months from bonding to bringing the child home and right now it is almost 8 months and it’s still not resolved. The 1st denial was painful but the 2nd one made us really angry!!!

What’s next???? Well that’s another story!!! We thought it would be Superior Court but now we found out that we have to appeal again at the Regional level but this time with a 3 judge panel. It’s hard enough trying to convince 1 judge imagine trying to convince 2 out of the 3. There is no law that says we have to appeal again at the Regional level with the 3-judge panel but they told us we have no choice. We know the problem is in Taraz and that is why we were hoping to skip this cassation and go directly to the Superior court where our only hope to resolve this problem is at. We are stuck in a vicious circle and need to seriously think what we will do next.